Hip Hop Blogs: Yes, Virginia, Hip-hop is Not Dead

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say hip-hop is dead. Papa says, "If you see it in a blog, it's so." Please tell me the truth, is hip-hop dead? -Virginia O'Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the nostalgia of a nostalgic age. They do not enjoy the present but the past. They think that nothing can be as good as the hip-hop music they heard when they first got into it. All fans, Virginia, whether they be old or young, are fickle. In this great music of ours, a fan is a mere insect, an ant, in his taste as compared with the boundless variety about him, as measured by the open mind capable of appreciating the whole of hip-hop music.

Yes, Virginia, hip-hop is not dead.

It lives on as certainly as style and youth and the hustler's spirit continue, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Dag! how wack would be the world if there were no hip-hop! It would be as bland as if there were no Virginia's. There would be no bangin beats, no slick lyrics, no smooth dance moves to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in rhythm and blues. The external light with which Black youth culture fills the world would be extinguished.

Hip-hop is dead! You might as well say the dj is dead. You might get your papa to hire men to watch all the videos on Christmas eve to catch hip-hop dying, but even if you did not see real hip-hop, what would that prove? Nobody can describe real hip-hop, but that is no sign that hip-hop is dying. The best songs in the world are those that neither fans nor artists can describe. Did you ever see a dj searching for just the right record to play? Of course not, but that's no proof that they don't consider what to spin. Nobody can label or figure out what is real hip-hop amongst all the variety in hip-hop music.

You tear apart the lyrics and criticize what the rapper is saying, but there is a veil covering the music which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernatural beauty and skill beyond the slang. Is it all still alive? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else lasting and permanent.

Hip-hop is dead? Thank God it lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, we will continue to dance over breakbeats at the local houeseparty.